Sheila Yoshikawa: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable. We meet on Thursdays at 12 noon SLT for an hour. 8pm In UK, 3pm EST. VWER is a forum to educate and inform the community about issues that are important and relevant to education in virtual worlds.

Sheila Yoshikawa: This is a public meeting, so we will be keeping and publishing a transcript. The transcripts can be found at https://vwer.info/ The VWER continues to develop a community of educators from around the world.

Sheila Yoshikawa: @Scot, Robin Ashford used to be in SL a lot, back in the day, do you know her? She’s a librarian at George Fox University

Scot Jung: yes

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): The educational relevance of the video is that we could do the same thing about education.

Scot Jung: Robin and I work together some and she and I co-taught here in sl a number of years ago

Sheila Yoshikawa: I knew her fairly well when she was teaching and being a librarian in here

Scot Jung: Robin is great, quite an asset!

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): Hi Alex

Beth Ghostraven: Hi Alex, welcome to VWER

Sheila Yoshikawa: @Selby, the same thing in which way?

Alex Bonham (Alexandre100233 Bonham): hello

Sheila Yoshikawa: Hello Alex

Sheila Yoshikawa: In fact I think we finished introductions and now it’s up for anyone to suggest a topic or question for discussion

Sheila Yoshikawa: although we may have started, with selby

Sheila Yoshikawa: talking about his video

Sheila Yoshikawa: or rather me asking about it

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): How about a roast of the traditional education system, where we explain that having people sit in a classroom and take notes is great preparation/practice for life

Beth Ghostraven: lol Selby

Beth Ghostraven: the Monty Python approach to education

Beth Ghostraven: I think it’s a great idea!

Scot Jung: “bring out your dead”

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): yes — and I can make the video

Sheila Yoshikawa: it’s an ex-educator

Beth Ghostraven: like that spoof video that shows teacher hiring as if it were the NFL draft

Josain Zsun: It wasn’t?

Sheila Yoshikawa: the peril is someone stumbling across it and thinking it’s for real

Sheila Yoshikawa: or those people with no sense of humour

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): several presentations or skits of about 7 minutes each

Sheila Yoshikawa: lol Josain

Beth Ghostraven: Selby, I think something that long would lose people’s attention

Josain Zsun remembering the cattle calls in Tucson…

Sheila Yoshikawa: so just a few minutes?

Beth Ghostraven: I tend to drift off after 2 or 3 minutes of a video

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): We have it clearly labeled as comedy in case a dean see it

Sheila Yoshikawa: As an alternative to people in SL dancing, though I myself am guilty of posting a couple of videos of educators dancing in SL to Youtube

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): Once you hear a lecture about swimming, you never forget what you learned about lectures.

Beth Ghostraven: haha Selby

Sheila Yoshikawa: @Scot it is an “efficient” way to reach a large number of people at the same time, it takes less time to prepare than more thoughtful and engaged teaching, and universities have a load of large lecture rooms it is difficult to use for anything else

Sheila Yoshikawa: @Selby lol

Beth Ghostraven: Scot, excellent question–maybe lecture is the pedantic version of storytelling?

Scot Jung: I learned from great lecturers in the past, there is a place

Scot Jung: for me the key question is: who is responsible for learning?

Sheila Yoshikawa: Yes I think there is still a place for someone talking in an interesting way about something they care about

Sheila Yoshikawa: I think actually the learner has the ultimate responsibility for learning, to be honest

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): There is a place for great lectures, yes. On video or audio files.

Sheila Yoshikawa: but I see my responsibility to facilitate and scaffold learning and challenge learners too

Scot Jung: I think lecture persists because we have students who don’t want to be responsible for learning what is offered

Sheila Yoshikawa: I see it as my responsibility to create the conditions for learning

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): There is that, Scott
Scot Jung: and educators who offer what is not wanted

Sheila Yoshikawa: though it is mixed, there are a lot of educators who are doing more than lectures and learners who do take responsibility for learning, but it’s not 100% with either…..

Sheila Yoshikawa: also you said Beth “but Sheila, it’s not efficient if it’s not effective”

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): I taught a class in research design and some students complained that I was not presenting material that would be on the test.

Josain Zsun: There were a couple of rare, dynamic teachers and professors that I loved to attend

Sheila Yoshikawa: @Selby yes you get that sort of thing

Sheila Yoshikawa: @Josain what subject was it you were studying?

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): I told them the test would call on them to show their skills in evaluating research designs, not memorize what was in the book or a lecture.

Josain Zsun: They were different subjects…and probably could have been any topic.

Sheila Yoshikawa: yes Josain

Sheila Yoshikawa: @Selby yes that is the sort of topic where it is pointless to try and memorise, that won’t help you apply what you’ve learnt….

Josain Zsun: RL calls…Best of the Season All

Beth Ghostraven: take care, Josain!

Beth Ghostraven: Hi Fuzz!

Sheila Yoshikawa: Our research methods class for our Masters students is taught almost entirely through big lectures, this year we have nearly 500 students taking it, most of them international (particularly Chinese) so that is challenging…..

Scot Jung: Here is an interesting scenario, on a course evaluation of a friend of mine who taught physics to pre-med students, he took a constructivist approach and on the course evaluation he got ripped apart because the students told him he made them do all the work, a favorite quote was, “I learned a lot in this class, but you did not teach me anything”

Sheila Yoshikawa: Hello Fuzz, always nice to see you!

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): lol, scott

Sheila Yoshikawa: OMG Scot

Sheila Yoshikawa: that really is depressing

Fuzz Difference: o/

Scot Jung: I thought learning was the goal, anyway

Scot Jung: not teaching

Sheila Yoshikawa: I think that’s the most depressing of all when it’s perceived as NOT being about learning

Sheila Yoshikawa: If it’s not about learning, perhaps we should just forget it all and sell people instant qualifications

Sheila Yoshikawa: I think some years ago there was a student here who was in a focus group about the teaching and learning who said “I didn’t come here to learn, I came to get a degree”

Beth Ghostraven: Sheila, that’s sad

Sheila Yoshikawa: yes

Scot Jung: @Sheila, I think we are getting to the instant qualifications thing

Scot Jung: and maybe in some skill areas that is okay, but sounds not training and not education to me

Sheila Yoshikawa: I’m not totally unrealistic, and people have different pressures and goals, but learning, going to university and learning changed my life

Scot Jung: like training, sorry

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): Many students view education as passing tests, not developing life skills. Many schools present it that way.

Scot Jung: ]agreed, Selby

Sheila Yoshikawa: yes one issue in the UK is that people are being channelled into university when perhaps they might gain more by going another route

Beth Ghostraven: I think that’s happening a lot in the US too–“everyone should take algebra and go to college!”

Scot Jung: that is breaking down here in the US

Sheila Yoshikawa: ;-(

Beth Ghostraven: Here’s something I wonder about a lot: Are people, as a whole, getting dumber?

Scot Jung: basic intelligence, no

Scot Jung: fully formed and capable humans, hmm?

Sheila Yoshikawa: well, the grades people are getting at various educational levels in the UK are going UP, ahem

Sheila Yoshikawa: there is discussion around whether it’s people getting brighter or grade inflation

Sheila Yoshikawa: I think that there seems to be as much peer pressure not to appear too bright as there ever was?

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): How do you turn a C student into a B student? Admit him to graduate school.

Beth Ghostraven: lol

Sheila Yoshikawa: and not necessarily being encouraged to work at being able to concentrate on things, or persist with hard concepts?

Sheila Yoshikawa: lol Selby

Sheila Yoshikawa: I don’t think people are getting more stupid, but I don’t think the education system and society are encouraging people as they could to work at challenging ideas, expanding ideas? Or this could be age speaking

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): It is possible to make multiple choice questions that test thinking, but easier to make those for memory of facts.

Sheila Yoshikawa: nods

Scot Jung: Here is a factoid from my newsfeed yesterday, the average ug does 14 hours out of class work per week compared to 24 20 some years ago

Beth Ghostraven: ug?

Sheila Yoshikawa: what was the research for that?

Scot Jung: undergrad

Beth Ghostraven: oh undergrad! lol

Sheila Yoshikawa: undergraduate

Scot Jung: I will try to find it

Scot Jung: and post it before we go

Beth Ghostraven: imagining cave people

Sheila Yoshikawa: So here, I think there are more students having to take jobs, also more peer pressure to spend time drinking and clubbing (in the UK the limit is 18 for drinking, I think you have to be older in USA?)

Sheila Yoshikawa: lol Beth

Scot Jung: 21 in US

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): I don’t think people are getting dumber, I think life is requiring smarter people

Sheila Yoshikawa: having to cope with more forms of communication

Sheila Yoshikawa: and smarter in other ways Selby?

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): there is no job for Job for John Henry

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): People need to learn how to learn

Sheila Yoshikawa: and for that – they need information literacy

Sheila Yoshikawa: had to get that in

Beth Ghostraven: yes

Sheila Yoshikawa: BTW is there another topic anyone wanted to raise?

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): What you learned in school is not good for a job 20 years later